Time to write our own rules — So I've been reading Dave Winer, Ethan Zuckerman, Jeff Jarvis, David Wienberger and Wendy Seltzer, all of whom have problems with what Facebook is doing with its members' data. — Dave in particular is looking for action:

A Gimmick Becomes a Real Trend — TWO years ago, Cyber Monday was a marketing gimmick in search of shoppers. This year, it seems to be a genuine trend that retailers have embraced. — In a survey of roughly 120 members of Shop.org, the trade group for online retailers …

Dear Jeff Bezos (one-week Kindle review) — I've read two books on it, which explains why I haven't been on Twitter very much in the past week. But the Kindle really bugs me now. I'm hitting all sorts of little things that the Kindle team simply didn't think through very well.

Torvalds On Where Linux Is Headed In 2008 — The creator of Linux is excited about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualization despite his personal lack of interest in the area.

Microsoft Quietly Readies Windows XP Update — Vista's first service pack got the limelight, but a release candidate of SP3 for XP was also delivered last week. — Recommend this story? — Just days after Microsoft Corp. delivered a release candidate preview for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 …

OLPC: How do we gauge success? Will 490,000 units do? — The One Laptop per Child project's "Give One, Get One" program has been extended through Dec. 31 as donations averaged about $2 million a day. On that pace, the OLPC should move about 490,000 units by the end of the year.

UK 'slow' on ultra-fast internet — Broadband industry leaders are to meet ministers to discuss how to stop the UK dropping into the internet "slow lane". — More than half of all UK homes now have a broadband connection, at an average speed of four megabits a second (Mbps).

Zoho Writer now lets you edit documents offline — Zoho, the online office software company, has just released the next iteration on its online word processor, Zoho Writer. Now, multiple users can go offline, work on a document, then go back online and sync their offline changes to that same document.

Mobile Web: So Close Yet So Far — ON the surface, the mobile Web is a happening place. There's the iPhone in all its glory. More than 30 companies have signed up for the Open Handset Alliance from Google, which aims to bring the wide-open development environment of the Internet to mobile devices.